This blog is meant as a resource for people who wants to know about the US$150 laptop Medison Celebrity that went missing. News, articles and personal opinions. We also bring up Medison Consulting in general and Valdi Ivancic's other adventures.

Monday, September 17, 2007

2checkout still supports Medison

(This post in short: It's NOT over!)

As you might have read, I posted the following questions on 2co's forum some days ago (the full conversation can be found here):

The questions we need answers for at this moment, to settle some speculations at least, are the following:* Are Medison still able to mark the open "authorized orders" as shipped, without any proof at all like last time?* What will you require Medison to do to open up orders of them again, and what proofs of this will you require?* How long are the deadline until you cancel all orders if the above isn't met?

These questions should be easy to answer and shouldn't violate anything or anyone. These questions are the ones that currently are in the customers and the general public's interest. Agreed?kristin from 2co has now posted a reply:

"The questions you want answered are directly related to vendor status and that is confidential information. Since the orders erroneously marked shipped have been refunded there are no additional credit card orders in our system which need to be canceled.

2Checkout carries the liability in regard to this issue and the proofs we will require are also subject to negotiation between Medison and 2Checkout.

Your concern, as either a "potential vendor or customer" should end with the knowledge that you, as a consumer, are protected and that you, as a vendor, won't be the topic of conversation due to a self-appointed protector the the online shopping community who believes they should be privy to internal communications about your business, product or past.

2Checkout was founded to help the entrepreneur. We do business with a quite a few people with bad credit, who lost their merchant accounts due to excessive fraud or who simply want to dip their toes into the online selling community before diving in with long-term contracts, etc. That is no way is indicative of a lack of commitment toward protecting our consumers because we hold the fiscal responsibility. "Buyer beware" doesn't apply when 2Checkout is the middleman.You've managed to skew that perspective around because we won't play into your desire to be the source of information regarding Medison and if customers or vendors choose to go elsewhere because of that I would hope they'd reconsider because you've done a great disservice in generating any type of doubts about the integrity of our business.

Finally, should Medison get the kinks worked out I'll personally be buying a laptop or two. Especially if it is sold via 2Checkout. It's a bargain."Yes, that's right, instead of answering the questions, they go full out with a personal attack against me. Good work, that really shows how serious they are. :/They also show that they, for some reason, still believes that the laptops just are some "kinks" away. Unbelievable.

The small answer we do get though, is that all orders except the few hundred that was marked as shipped still stands, and that the persons with those orders could have their cards charged without any delivery what so ever, and have to wait for a month for 2co to return the money as last time.

I posted the following reply:

Thanks for your reply. Can I take this answer as a confirmation that all other orders still are active? Would be great with a clarification on that, since many customers believe that everything is canceled from your previous replies, and it has also been reported that all orders has been canceled on news sites. You must agree on that it's important with proper information to the customers at least?I would also like to say that I don't understand the part about "you've done a great disservice in generating any type of doubts about the integrity of our business". The only thing I have done is to ask questions in the public interest and provide you, other partners, media and customers with facts. If that creates doubts about your business it's really your own fault!

That will be my last try to communicate with them, they have clearly shown that they rather want people to spread rumors and speculate instead.

In other news, medison.se was down for some time earlier today with the message:

Account over bandwidthMaximum bandwidth has been exceeded and this page has been temporarily disabled. Please go to your service manager to purchase more and reactivate.Remember what Valdi wrote in the last press release, that they changed hosting provider to increase the availability of the sites? No comments from me necessary...

122 comments:

There's nothing personal in what 2CO said about you. They comment on your actions, that's all. It's true, too.

I for one think you should keep the focus on Medison and not start attacking windmills and 2CO. They are a legitimate vendor with hundreds of other vendors. They are not the bad guy here, at least not yet. Let them make their own decisions about Medison. If they were not protecting their customers the situation would be different, but for the time being they have actually protected customers against Medison.

I'm not attacking them. I'm answering questions that don't get answered. Loads of persons asks questions that don't get answered regarding this. Newspapers are asking questions that won't get answered. In my opinion it's extremely unserious of a company to reply in such a way.2co has misinformed customers several times, and are of some reason supporting a supplier that has broken their terms several times. And there still is an issue as I wrote, customers might get their cards charged without anything getting shipped. I really do believe that my questions are justified.

I can't agree more with Tommy, about the responses given by 2CO. They will NEVER give a straight response; all you have to do is "guess" what they are trying to say. They are pissed off with us trying to have some basic answers to basic questions as "Internet shoppers", but that, will never happen. Even some of their customers are also getting annoyed and aggressive, since their forum has been used to get some answers about Medison, and themselves, you can read it in the 2CO forums. We all understand that our credit cards are secured....well, they had a little flaw, but that was corrected, but that leads again to certain question from us about 2CO's processes, or not?

"Let them make their own decisions about Medison" Yes, they can take any decisions they want, but when my credit card is in play, I have the right to know what they have done to my order: if it is live or is it cancelled. I have personally contacted 2CO twice, sent them e-mails and got the same responses, they even respond with a template, so don't tell me they have "distracted" their attention to all of us....give me a break! There is a problem and they have to deal with it, whether they like it or not, as simple as that, and if some one else thinks the opposite, then sorry, I still want some answers.

2CO keeps al orders as valid, until you call them directly and tell them you want your order cancelled. That's my interpretation of their answers. What worries me is that even if 30 days have passed, they just need to get another authorization from the credit card company, and that's enough to charge your CC, unless you call your CC to advice about the issue, or you have used a Random Credit Card generator number as many CC offer now a days for Internet Shopping.

Tommy, thanks for the great job and time you have been putting down to have us informed in a fast and simple way, with out having to chase for answers in Cyberspace.

My guess is that you are a bunch of dual-headed morons, who loves to make a lot of noise just to see what happens.

The only reason you are so concerned about 2CO is because you are afraid to loose money.And why is that?Let me answer that one for you:It's because you have actually put an order in for a Celebrity.SO..... you might whine and scream like babies, but in the end you all still hope to get a $150 laptop.

If you REALLY think there's a problem, why don't you just cancel your order? 2CO even recommends you to do that if you're unsecure of their operation.You can always make a new order if/when it turns out that Medison can deliver.Bud nooooo, you have to stick to your orders and try to put your insecurity on someone else to justify yourself.

Come on...... Get a life.Stick to the order and accept the terms, or cancel and get rid of the risk.

I don't think that many people have orders that post here, or complain for that reason anyway. Many are just interested in how the story evolves, and me personally I care about the people that have orders that don't read Swedish news, this blog or 2co's forum. I also care about potential partners and investors in the same category, Valdi has clearly shown in his previous companies that he can make money disappear.And once again, I have done nothing that hurts Valdi/Medison/2co that they haven't caused them self.

I also think that it would be good for you to respect other people and don't use such an abusive language towards other posters. I will delete any futher comments with that kind of wording.

I'm not attacking them. ...In my opinion it's extremely unserious of a company to reply in such a way.

I am surprised you deny attacking 2CO. You attacked 2CO right there. It is obvious to all who follows this blog that you have turned from digging up stuff about Medison and Valdi to attacking 2CO and call them an unserious company just because they have a business relationship with Valdi.

I have to say, Tommy, that I've supported this blog in the past but 2CO is right in that you are making noise and not much more presently.

Your blog is a great service in that is provides news. This is essential since you have already become THE centralized place for news and THE standard.

However, with this responsibility you should calm down and simply report news. Do not try to stir up problems since at this point the peak of the whole medison scam/etc is over. - You've reached your most popular moment already and just like the rest of us we are simply waiting to see what happens.

In ANY case 2CO will give us our money back or we will maybe get our orders. Case closed. They aren't doing anything wrong. - You can jump ship and cancel your order AT ANY time.

No, I wasn't calling them unserious company because they have a relationship with Valdi, I'm calling them unserious because of that answer. There is loads of people calling 2co this and that, that they are a part of the scam, that they should be reported to the bbb and so on. I have constantly during this whole affair said that Valdi won't be able to scam customers trough 2co and that they indeed are a serious company that protect their customers money. I just don't think that their responsibility ends there.

The reason why I have been following up on 2co is because they have changed their story several times and won't answer why. It looks to be directed more towards 2co since there isn't happening much more in other ends, but from 2co's end much has happened lately.

It is news that 2co continues to support Medison even though other news sites has reported otherwise. Their reply to me is news.

And I'm not claiming to be a journalist, a news service or claiming to be neutral. I'm a blogger and I write what I feel for the moment. I have nothing to lose or gain if more or less people read this blog. If you don't like the way I write or what I write, stop reading. I do appreciate you opinion, but I have replied to this several times, and people asked me to "calm down" or be more neutral even since day one, but it's either this way or not at all, and most people seems to like it.

Mr Calm Down please calm down and open your eyes. Tommy did not attacked 2CO, he just asked questions that very important at this point for everyone who made order. What we have from 2CO is usual set of useless words. I think they are so "confident" just because of they trying to make profit working with Valdi who is INDEED sick clown, liar and scammer. And it seems like they protect Vladi's interests more than customers.

Sure, the answers by 2CO are evasive and contradict some of their earlier statements, but cannot see them harm customer's interests. Customers that were inappropriately billed have been refunded and in all other cases customers will only be billed if they receive their ordered laptop, which we know and 2CO knows will never happen.

It's pretty obvious that some of the replies here are coming directly from 2CO staff. Why someone would care that much of the criticism towards 2CO and not be affiliated in any way with it is just beyond my comprehension.

And if you read the replies posted by the staff in the 2CO forum it gets even more obvious. The same irritated and patronizing tone is present. But as always it is easier to attack the messenger, especially if you (deep inside) know that you screwed it big time.

I guess there was a time when 2CO trusted Medison, but most likely that isn't the case anymore. Now they've painted themselves into a corner and can't get out, and instead try to diminsh the whole thing, sweep it under the rug, whatever...

Yes, of course getting the UL, FCC etc. approval information and a photo of the product label from Medison would be a no-brainer for 2CO. A couple of e-mails exchanged during one day of work...and that's it! You just can't question such evidence - especially not if you can look it up at FCC and get it confirmed.

So we all know the reality is this has nothing to do with logistics. Sorry 2CO, this is BS.

There's nothing personal in what 2CO said about you. They comment on your actions, that's all. It's true, too.

The problem I have with their opinion about Tommy, is that even if you factor out Tommy, they end up with the same problem (following link has thread posted 3 months ago, before Tommy and before Medison):

"2CO Staff you are quickly making this forum into a farce by not answering the actual questions being asked. If this section of the forum is to answer vendors questions, help both our relationships and improve 2CO, then i suggest you actually start answering the hard questions you are being asked about your service by your contracted, paying vendors."

Find the coincidence weird? It's apparent they have great difficulty in communication, or this wouldn't happen.

While I also asked Tommy to not turn this into flame earlier (when he asked people to register accounts and complain at 2CO's forums), I must confess 2CO definitely overreacted in their last answer, trying to throw the blame on bystander who's mostly just commenting on what 2CO and Medison are doing themselves.

I agree that some other company than Clevo or Medison could have received the approvals.

That possibility is there for sure. But I did a bit of scanning of approved laptops and nothing came to my attention.

And again, the specs and photos were indeed from Clevo.

So, there could be some actual customer of Clevo who would get the product approved and sell it to Medison in their own name. But hey, that certainly sounds like much more expensive type of business to me.

So what is the evidence 2CO has about Medison having a first lot ready for shipment?

Afterall, logistics was the problem, wasn't it?

It would be nice to see some actual photos of this first lot ready to ship...I mean...just simple photos of something other than Valdi's own laptop and all the empty words.

I agree with the posters here, submitting that you're making an unwarranted fuss with regard to 2CO. Your questions are inappropriate; you expect a company to divulge internal practices that are ultimately irrelevant given that 2CO guarantees that your money will not be lost.

If funds are transferred, and a product not received, perhaps it is true that it will take a few weeks to receive a refund. It is apparent, however, that 2CO makes such a delay known in advance -- and permits one to cancel their order to avoid this issue entirely.

In the end, Tommy Truthseeker, your blog which was once a useful source of information pertaining to the Medison Celebrity has become a forum in which you rant about a payment processing company that has been quite reasonable and provides a useful service in protecting buyers -- even those seeking to purchase $150 laptops, $1000 BMWs and $10000 penthouse suites.

I don't want to question 2CO's integrity on returning money for products not delivered. They don't need to keep repeating anything about this.

Certainly I believe it's essential for their image and future survival that people wont lose money when a vendor don't deliver a product.

So that I don't think is questionable.

The real question is why 2CO joins with Medison in fooling customers for week after week. How bad does a case need to be before they take action and terminate sales? To me it was so obvious within minutes from when I read the Medison web site. High volumes is the #1 key to low cost in this industry and nothing about Medison indicates high volumes. Furthermore, the price of US$150 was already ridiculously low.

It's really that simple.

Then add to this the lies and lacking evidence.

Fundamentally I believe Valdi had some contact with Clevo, received a trial sample from them of their lowest cost model, but never got further than that with them simply due to lacking commitment.

Without having the agreements in place with a vendor, he then started selling this Clevo model through 2CO who didn't require much of a negotiation to establish a sales channel.

Everything about this whole flow of events is just so incredible absurd.

Thanks Tommy and also Lukeduke at the 2co forum. Tommy, you said that this was your last post to 2co and I agree. Don't spend any more time on them, they have proved over and over that they will not answer relevant question. Status now? I don't know but, at www.medisoncelebrity.com. we can still se following,"2Checkout.com, Inc. is an authorized retailer of Medison Europe Limited" and if I click "buy now" I get incorrect parameter, bla bla from 2co. No other valid information. 2co have only one chance to make me ever buy anything from them in the future. Press charges to Valdi/Medison and make an offical announcment that they learned from this and in the the future they will answer relevant questions.

Witness the leap of logic 2CO requires of us in their latest post. The question is, when is the deadline:

"This is again not public information, as it would clearly constitute a communication between 2Checkout and Medison. Customers who are willing to wait until the deadline has been reached will be aware when they receive their cancellation notice, those who are unwilling to wait until that time are free to cancel theirtransaction at any time."

HOW THE F**K DO YOU DECIDE WHETHER TO WAIT FOR A DEADLINE YOU DON'T KNOW.

This has nothing to do with refunds, or however credit card transactions are safe ...

This has to do with a sick puppy's(Brazilien Bob, ak Valdi) fantasies. Being associated with him means that you can't be very smart ... A guy that will deliver a computer at a price noone in the industry have heard of --- while not being able to keep a "home-made" web-page running.

Brazilien Bob will sooner or later be hanged out public (at least in the Swedish press). At that time, everybody - including 2CO must answear to the public ...

If 2CO where a little bit clever, they would end all affairs with Medison, and start to write a public appology ... The longer they wait, the more stupid they will look when the truth emerges ...

Look at Bagdad Bob --- I don't know if 2CO would have liked him as a customer???

Well.. I once was a supporter of this site and Tommys work but after medison stopped communicating things turned to the worse. Now that medison is MIA all focus has been shifted to 2CO and to be quite honest, even though 2CO seem to be avoiding "your" questions - they have no obligation to respond to your emails, hell you're not even a customer. Noone has lost a single cent so far so give it a rest already! 2CO might not give you the answers you want, that doesnt make them thieves or scammers. Stop this nonsense please you self proclaimed defender of the world. Stick to the facts and give up your don quixote war.

It would seem 2co has given a rather lengthy, rambling answer to some of the questions TT has posted on their website. However the truly important Q's were shielded behind their rather flimsy, constant, excuses of confidentiality.

The only reason to keep such inane information confidential at this point is to hide their own complicity in this affair.

In the end what is at stake is faith.

The run on the banks in England today and yesterday are a example of how people are loosing faith in the financial institutions.

What 2co is doing is lowering that trust, causing even more issues for people who already have doubts.

Paypal is a rather decent company and very direct. You buy something, the seller needs to deliver. if no delivery can be shown to have been made, you get your money back and the seller is punished.

2co seems to be taking exception to this basic rule of economics. it's fine that they help people with bad credit/selling histories, but that should be part of"their opening statements "HI... not all our clients are honest. cavet emptor!

"We do business with a quite a few people with bad credit, who lost their merchant accounts due to excessive fraud or who simply want to dip their toes into the online selling community before diving in with long-term contracts, etc."

That must be the most ridiculous tech support answer I've seen from any company ever...

"Paypal is a rather decent company and very direct. You buy something, the seller needs to deliver. if no delivery can be shown to have been made, you get your money back and the seller is punished.2co seems to be taking exception to this basic rule of economics"

Well 2Co did exactly what you would have expected from Paypal there.Medison didn't had proof of delivery, customers got a refund and Medison was punished by obviously having his 2CO account frozen (which by the way make it hard for him to mark other "pending" orders as shipped as you lot seems to be afraid of).

Ooone more thing!It's pretty damned pathetic that 2co has posters here. you have your own blog and can spread your BS there as thickly as you please. but stay away from forums where people are venting about legitimate issues YOUR company is causing!

Well lets look at your own comment:"Medison didn't had proof of delivery, customers got a refund and Medison was punished by obviously having his 2CO account frozen (which by the way make it hard for him to mark other "pending" orders as shipped as you lot seems to be afraid of)."

By 2co's own admission this is not correct.Medison's account was not frozen, it was "suspended" which to most right thinking people think "hmm that must mean the account is dead, all is right" sadly this is not borne out.

In fact it's pointed out in a rather long post ( http://www.2checkout.com/community/support/topic.php?id=340&page )

his issue appears to hinge on a misunderstanding of the word "suspend" which means "temporary abrogation or withholding or stoppage of payment of debts or claims". It is used this way in our Operating Regulations, and is at one point followed with the words "At the discretion of 2CO, such suspension may continue indefinitely, or result in a permanent suspension of Supplier", and at other is differentiated from the words "termination" or "closed".

earlier they say this curious thing:"The status of the Medison account is not public information, and cannot be disclosed."

2CO is probably not having their business doing very well if they cling onto vendors such as Medison.

Truth is, a really huge company (such as PayPal) throws out any suspicious vendors, simply because they have no time to deal with the mess a faulty vendor could create for them.

2CO apparently operates in a different situation, and despite their claims for serving countless number of vendors, truth is any average payment processor / reseller that competes with 2CO out there also has countless vendors signed with them.

It's a completely different problem that they actually still claim Medison is a "legitimate enterprise" (quoting their post), which speaks about modest IQ levels of their management, the least.

And to illustrate my point about how much MORE business PayPal has compared to 2checkout, and how this affects their business practices, I'll offer an indirect evidence of the popularity of both services:

I don't get your point.Looks to me that 2Co definition of a "suspend" account is the same than Paypal one's for a frozen account (except that a Paypal seller who had is account frozen can still perform refunds). Frozen Paypal accounts can also be "defrosted"...As 2Co is can be only temporary.I strongly suggest you to look at www.paypalsucks.com. You will see Paypal had, and still have there share of stories...

The idea of a company that works with distressed companies that have had issues in the pas is not a bad idea. It gives them a (last) chance to redeem themselves. That in it self is kind of noble.

the problem is that they need to have an iron (and consistent, and fair) fist when it comes to dealing with their clientèle.

They should be used to handing out temporary suspensions and fines left and right to ensure that companies (or persons) with a history or fraud, scams, etc are dealt with swiftly so that people can have confidence.

But for some unknown reason they are treating vladi (the truth impaler) with not just kit gloves, but lovingly, gently, and abnormally well.

it's obvious from a previous posting, in their own words, they have already un-suspended vladi. This really makes no sense what so ever.

They are really hurting their clients, who may have had bad luck in the bast and are now looking to rebuild their credit/credibility and now they may loose all that because they are associated with a (now) shady company like 2co.

it's no longer an issue about vladi, but about 2co and if we can really trust them in the future.

There is no denying paypal has their own issues. Several web comics I rather like have had their pay pal accounts (pay pal tips etc) canceled because PP felt they were in violation of their TOS, and they need to go elsewhere for donations to keep themselves running.

3. Many 2checkout vendors have found their balance zeroed out and 2checkout does nothing about it.

4. 2checkout holds some of their vendors' money for around 4 months under the pretext they do "fraud checking". Sometimes the money is reportedly sent, but doesn't appear in the bank ever.

5. 2checkout is suspiciously a target of too many fraud orders, and people are billed the refund fee. This directly conflicts what 2checkout has said earlier that THEY pay for the Medison refunds. Apparently not.

6. Curiously they do NOT filter out the knows fraudsters, so next month the vendors see the same fraudsters have fraudilent purchases with the same cards again. It's almost as if it's part of 2checkout's business model... although I admit that's a speculation on my part.

In one notable case a guy lost 12 THOUSAND dollars from his account. 2checkout's ToS says they're not responsible for money losses for their vendors.

And now to quote the former employee:

"I'm not surprised at all to see the horrible reviews online about 2Checkout.com. I worked for them but would like to remain anonymous, so I won't tell you how long I was employed. I WILL tell you that they are a joke, but you probably already know this.

The customer service manager that was in charge is a DRUNK who smokes pot and drinks nearly 7 days @ week. She was involved in a "secret" romance with another employee and they both ended up getting fired eventually.

The owner and his materialistic wife is interested in only MONEY. They had the opportunity to create a fantastic company that would put a HUGE dent in Paypal and other similiar companies, but they screwed up from the very start.

What advantage does 2CO have over others you can sign up with? There is NONE! Their fees are MORE. The customer service is a joke. That Neva Johnson who works in fraud is a B**** who doesn't do her job. Everything from their website to the way they do business if FULL of problems. Go with PayPal or another reputable company, but NOT 2Checkout.com."

All in all.. the pink picture they're painting on their forums is far worse in reality.

Oh I take a huge grain of salt, but you also figure out it provides at least some insight into the problems of 2checkout, and it mirrors what we see outside: inadequate fraud control, inadequate tech support.

Also this review site provided some insight into why they keep repeating they are "reseller" (and why they still don't act as such):

"My complaints are mostly recent as they seem to have been "busted" by Master Card for trying to appear like a credit card processor when (unbeknownst to most customers) they were really a reseller. Funny that a "reseller" gives customer refunds against the vendors will (for non-guaranteed items) and then charges me $29 as a chargeback fee."

I saw plenty of people claim 2CO rejected their payment as "fraudilent", using their legitimate credit cards.

Then I found a review covering the vendor side of this problem:

"We have had nothing but problems. Mostly 2checkout do not accept orders from our customers - fair enough that they are being careful - but the staff are incredibly rude when you try to get help. The reason is always cited as the customers computer or card problem (according to them about 50% of our customers are fraudsters) but when (as unfortunately frequently happens) the customer then resorts to paying us via Paypal or Moneybookers immediately there is never a problem! ... "

And one more guy like him:

"My experience with 2checkout has gotten to the point to where i had to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. I contacted 2checkout several times about sending my payments to my bank account with no real response. They keep telling me my account has not been verified and they will do it but it never gets done and i never get my money. Please if you can not use 2checkout then DONT."

I'm starting to think they have all the love for Valdi since maybe they're both in the same kin.

Plus who knows what would've happened with his money afterwards..

And few more with tie more into out situation:

"2checkout either do not complete fraud checks or they are incorrect. Bad fraud checking methods cause orders not to be filled. Refunds for non-delivery of product are either slow or never happen."

"The money kept being held for one reason or another, when I tried speaking to them they were very rude ..."

"We have been with 2Checkout for over 1 1/2 years now, having processed over $350,000 from them. I cannot emphasize on the lax attitude of the management in trying to improve their customer service. They do NOT reply back to support tickets (if you want proof, ask anyone who has had a 2CO account)"

"2co cashed the money but didn't put it into my account. I have written this also to their customer service. I had a reply after 36 hours and that wasn't a good answer -- they were saying system was so busy."

That.. is just plain fucking SCARY!I've been with pay pal almost since the beginning, and would use them if I had a online business by default anyway....but this kind of stuff scares the hell out of me from ever using someone else!

Whatever can be said about Medison and 2CO, there are certain things that are not quite correct on the pages here (there is enough of strange things going on, no need to make something up):

FCC Approval. Like someone said above, there can be a dosen or more names for the same OEM product. You can buy 100 TVs from China, pre-FCC approved and they slap your name of choice on it, for example your store name. Same applies to OEM notebooks.

A notebook that fits Medison description EXISTS. And it's not branded as Clevo.

Just google Positivo V41. Yes, it's sold in Brazil. I pointed at an example in an older comment. Took me about 2 minutes to find it by google by using Sao Paulo in the search string (Sao Paulo is mentioned at the Medison homepage).

It however seems expensive for the specs, but maybe they have high luxury taxes on computer hardware in Brazil.

But I still wonder why the one at the press conference had czech keyboard layout.... Brazil/Portugeese layout is different.

"And now to quote the former employee"...That's a more than 2 years old post...some of the post from the provided link dated back from 2003…

I have been a vendor of 2co since Aug 2004. Proceed over 15K through them. About 20% of my sales, the rest going through Paypal.Never had a single problem to get my money wired from 2Co (and I'm outside the USA/got a lost money withdraw lost by Paypal…took 2 months to recover).I had only 3 fraudulent orders, a very low ratio, and not lower or higher ratio than Paypal. Granted I lost fightback charges for all. But Paypal isn't better for this.As everyone knows, be it 2Co or Paypal, you only get the horrible stories online. Satisfied vendors rarely post on forums or blogs.

1. You have done a rather fantastic job in revealing how things sometimes works out on the internet.

Thank you for that!

2.I think that the fraud of Valdi's "Medison" (there are other subscribers to that name on the net) has by now been totally "dressed off".

May I refer you to one of the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen ("The Emperor Without Clothes).

3.As far as 2CO is concerned, I think you should realize that transactions on the net are not always comparable with the standards set out by the countries of Scandinavia or, or for that matter, the EU.

On the other hand, it is also obvious that nobody will loose their money in this case.

4.To me it seems, that that the whole issue has no more interest in the public domain.

The Press has backed off by now. Probably with good reasons.- Life goes on.

5.Tommy, you have worked a lot on this case. You have, indeed, done well. Now, I think it's time that you sit back and enjoy the upcoming weekends without thinking too much about Valdi and this whole affair.

/Anonymous sa... I just wish Swedes would learn the difference between "lose" and "loose"./I just wish f....n tosser like you would get h..l out of international blogs like this and become an english teacher somewhere.

Going back to the initial title of the blog: "Medison Celebrity, Scam or just a Bad Idea", I just gave up. It is definitely a SCAM due to the way 2CO has handled all its customers that ordered this Out of Space Laptop, and Medison disappearing from the map.. Bad Idea? , I believe it wasn't after all. After working in the electronic manufacturing business for +20 years, with the drop of prices of components, and the difference between regular components and "high quality" ones, I'm convinced that a "low quality" Laptop is feasible to be build for $150, taking in account that there aren't any marketing, service or any heavy overhead costs in the process. And most important, that there are not going to add those excessive margins to the end product, as other branded Laptops normally do. Last the OS included is not Windows, its a free Linux based OS. If today any branded laptop is offered starting @ $450 USD, basic configuration, and it needs to cover all mentioned costs, you can imagine that the real cost of producing these boxes, is close or even under $150 !! Has anyone looked how much a Intel or AMD processor costs? You will be amazed how cheap they can be (the ones that don't comply with the toughest specs.), so you can imagine how much it costs to produce.

Any way, I believe Medison failed, and 2CO, just believed and still believes, it is possible to do, but with so many "secrets", they just have disappointed everybody, for not being honest on what's going on.

TT good work, but I think this story has deviated some times into aggression, bad feelings, and has lost its original focus, thanks to some stubborn people, just going on and on the same issues, trying to defend 2CO. I just cancelled my order, even though 2CO, still offered me to keep it opened, waiting for some magic fairy to build these laptops. This will never happen, until some one else takes the initiative again.

disappointed said...I'm convinced that a "low quality" Laptop is feasible to be build for $150, taking in account that there aren't any marketing, service or any heavy overhead costs in the process.

I absolutely agree that when you look at the raw costs of the BOM and labour and ignore after sales warranty service costs, support, R&D and so on, you should be able to get down to US$150.

But you forgot the important part of the equation...you need to order high quantities of the parts to get the best deals with your vendors. And you need the best deals to make the world's cheapest laptop obviously.

But you forgot the important part of the equation...you need to order high quantities of the parts to get the best deals with your vendors.

I fully agree with you, no doubt when you are in manufacturing, you are talking big volumes, other wise you would be a "garage" stand. I think that this part of the equation is what might have failed, when only 7,000 orders were received, of the 200 K to 300 K expected by Medison, or at least that was what Valdi mentioned in some conference.

To good to be true, that scared a lot of people, or simply didn't believe it. Any how, may be someone should take the initiative again? Peter, you are in CA?, should we give it a try?

If he had a clue he'd sell those for $450 in lower volumes. REMEMBER, he offered to supply the same computers at $450 in various hardware stores earlier this year (and last year).

This failed. Why would it fail? He has no computers, and no idea where to get them from, and no money.

Also, guys, no service, no warranty and whatnot: you can NOT bring this to $150, god damn. Take a look at his spec with optical drive and all that, and if you claim it's *plausible*, give me the sum of the parts, imagining the best high volume deals you could imagine (let's stick to a classic volume: 10 million parts).

I'll be waiting for the cost of each parts here to support your claims.

I for one think you should keep the focus on Medison and not start attacking windmills and 2CO.

I appreciate all you've done to maintain a clearing house on suspected Medison activities, but 2CO has no reason to respond to you with such detailed information. They have done nothing to earn my disapproval, and frankley my respect for their honorable handeling of customer and client had increased during this situation.

Most companies would not have cooperated to the extent that 2CO has, and I think you should lay off them and focus on Medison.

"We'll see what we can do to accommodate your request so that people realize that we're actually more focused on our core business than one single vendor that may or may not ever be able to bring his business plan to fruition."

So, their public position about unlimited faith in Medison is cracking.

Have you ever thought about how many years of your life you've already spent sitting in front of your TV just watching something passively that just helps accelerate the inevitable death of brain cells?

At least this blog is interactive entertainment and might slow that process down or even develop your brain a bit.

Yes, I agree. Life is a lot more than blogs. This is the only one that ever caught my attention anyway and although I've probably spent more time writing in it than Valdi has on maintaining his web site during the same time (LOL), it's still not more than the time it took me to drive to work last week.

"I will cellibrate when Valdi finally goes down ... and after reading the "clever" guys responses at 2CO I will celebrate when they will have to admint that Valdi is a fake."

What if I told you you have no reason to celebrate since we just shipped 300 machines to their new owners? We'll be shipping 500 machines next week. And from then we expect to ship 1000 machines each week until we exhaust our current orders.

Then 2CO will open the site for new orders.

We've also signed with important advertisers during these days, and we have more spots open, you're welcome to join us, since you expressed interest in our offers.

It's so much a joke that Valdi would ever be shipping a US$150 laptop from his new assembly plant in Brazil.

Certain things are just obvious.

But yeah, I just came back from a trip to Mars by the way. I was too lazy to wait for NASA completing their damn project so I made my own low cost rocket.But it was great up there and I could only do it because I build it step by step through my global experience.My stupid camera broke of course (I got it cheap) so all my photos are stuck in the camera. But for all you guys who believe in Valdi and probably also still believe the earth is flat. I gotta tell, you, it's NOT!

Tommy Thruthseeker is kind of patethic in his trail to find "evidence" against 2CO and medison. Personally I don't think medison will ever deliver anything- but I'm also pretty sure they never had in mind to do any frauds or alike.

And really if you don't see why 2CO don't want to play your game- perhaps you should reconsider you hobby "journalism", you're not really good at it.

With the lack of news, it's time to remember some "old Medison news" many of us might have almost forgot:

February 20, 2007Brazil!We have, together with partners, opened up a laptop factory in Brazil. The news was released by the company owner, Valdi Ivancic, who also says, "We are only assembling laptops in our plant in Sao Paulo now before our own plant will be ready for manufacturing".

So indeed Valdi had already entered production February 20 :-)

Six months of production! They must have a huge warehouse full of those Celebrities in Brazil at this point :-)

I guess the Medison Sao Paolo laptop assembly plant is comparable to the great Medison Apple Store.

I have been on the sidelines watching this comedy... but have to ask a question now. Is there no 'internet fraud prevention' or 'consumer protection' unit in your government or Police in Sweden? It seems they should be the ones asking the questions and not Tommy and the potential "customers". Here in Canada they would likely have shut down the product website by now, if the 'company' could not prove that they are a legitimate business with a business plan and a real product to deliver. Or is the opinion of everyone still that 'no crime has been committed'. That's like saying someone is pointing a gun at me but has done nothing wrong as they have not pulled the trigger yet.

When will the laptops be delivered?

The first deliveries was promised to be the 15th of August 2007. This was pushed to the 31st of August 2007.
This was
and not a single computer has been delivered yet.

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